Back when the Houston Chronicle endorsed GOP candidate Ted Cruz to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate, it largely expressed admiration for his Democratic opponent, whom it seems not to have supported mainly on the grounds that he didn't have a lot of campaign support and obviously wouldn't win. This week, the newspaper has drawn national attention - a mix of praise and scorn - for a new editorial that has been described as a withdrawal of...

Pride, it is said, goeth before a fall. Now come the recriminations. Repeated national surveys have shown public support for the Republican Party tanking since GOP lawmakers banded together to shut down the federal government and bring the U.S. to the brink of financial default. On a more personal level, Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, one of the highest-profile supporters of the impasse, has seen his appproval ratings plunge at home - a conservative stronghold that delivered President Obama a mere 25% of the vote in 2012. Now, in a rare statement of second thoughts, the hometown newspaper of Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has expressed its regrets for endorsing him a year ago. Cruz was one of the chief architects of the impasse.

Tribune Co., parent of the Los Angeles Times, is examining its operations in an effort that is likely to result in staff reductions at the company's daily newspapers. The company acknowledged a cost-cutting review is underway after Chicago business blogger Robert Feder wrote late Thursday that Tribune may slash as much as $100 million in expenses from its eight daily newspapers. A Tribune spokesman called Feder's report "grossly inaccurate" and said the company has not set an expense reduction target.

CAIRO -- Egyptian security forces raided the headquarters of the newspaper of the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm, confiscating equipment and sealing off the building, the paper's staff said Wednesday. The move against the Freedom and Justice newspaper, affiliated with the party of the same name, was the latest in a series of escalating measures by Egyptian authorities against the Brotherhood. The newspaper had circulated clandestinely in recent weeks, after other media outlets linked to the movement were shut down.

Two men are being held in connection with last week's shooting at a Chicago park in which 13 people were injured, including a 3-year-old boy, the Chicago Tribune reported. Chicago police would not comment on the report, and no news conference has been scheduled on the case, a police spokesman said. According to the Tribune, the two men were taken into custody Sunday. The men, both 22, were arrested around 7:30 p.m. CDT in an abandoned building in the 5200 block of South Marshfield Avenue, the newspaper said.

The fallout over Tokyo hosting the 2020 Summer Olympics has begun. So to speak. A satirical French newspaper called Le Canard enchaine has published cartoons that reference both the Games and radioactive leaks at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima nuclear plant. One cartoon shows a pair of sumo wrestlers with extra arms and legs. They are wrestling in front of the plant while a commentator says: "Thanks to Fukushima, sumo wrestling is now an Olympic sport. " Another cartoon shows two people in protective gear inspecting an Olympic pool with their Geiger counter.

News Corp. has sold its U.S.-based community newspaper group -- eight daily newspapers and 15 weeklies -- to an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group, an asset management firm. Financial terms were not disclosed. Rupert Murdoch's media company acquired the small papers as part of its 2007 acquisition of Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal. The Stockton Record was the only California newspaper in the collection. News Corp.'s Dow Jones Local Media Group owned two Oregon papers: the Medford Mail Tribune and the Ashland Daily Tidings.

Over the last year, the Orange County Register has been furiously paddling against a riptide that has newspapers around the country laying off journalists, shrinking coverage and in some cases cutting back home delivery. The Register has doubled the number of reporters and editors to 350 and fattened the paper by adding 22 weekly sections. On a recent Tuesday, it had 72 pages while the Los Angeles Times had 42. The Register's parent company, Freedom Communications Inc. in Irvine, has expanded its 26 weekly community newspapers and turned two into five-day-a-week operations.

Robin Thicke's summer pop hit is called "Blurred Lines," and journalism critics say that's exactly what they see in a music video parody that uses dancing TV news starlets to take a shot at Bob Filner, the San Diego mayor accused by 14 women of sexual harassment. The video by U-T TV -- the cable television affiliate of the newspaper once known as the Union-Tribune -- has created a modest storm for its attempt to make light of the scandal threatening to drive Filner from office. "Vapid and embarrassing," pronounced the managing editor of the Voice of San Diego news site, a U-T competitor.

Stan Lynde, creator of the syndicated western comic strip "Rick O'Shay," which ran for 20 years in major newspapers and reached about 15 million readers, died Tuesday of cancer in Helena, Mont. He was 81. Lynde was a Korean War veteran who had studied journalism at the University of Montana and briefly worked on his family's ranch in Colorado when he realized he wanted to try to make it as a cartoonist. After buying a one-way ticket to New York City in the 1950s, he worked his way up to commodities reporter at the Wall Street Journal while attending the School of Visual Arts at night.